Chinese television ready to soak up ‘SpongeBob’

By Georg Szalai and Jonathan Landreth

NEW YORK/BEIJING (Hollywood Reporter) – “SpongeBob
SquarePants” is set to splash down in 120 million Chinese
households by year’s end.

The animation favorite will follow in the path of other
shows on Viacom’s Nickelodeon network, such as “CatDog” and
“The Wild Thornberrys,” and air on the dedicated children’s
channel of state-run broadcaster China Central Television
(CCTV), sources said.

“SpongeBob” is expected to launch in China on or around
December 28, the one-year anniversary of the CCTV Children’s
Channel.

“The concepts of our shows that we’ve created here (in the
U.S.) travel in China and around the world, even though the
language is different,” Viacom chairman and CEO Sumner Redstone
recently told The Hollywood Reporter.

According to Viacom’s MTV Networks unit, “SpongeBob” is its
most widely distributed property ever. “SpongeBob” already is
syndicated in 170 markets in 24 languages, and the move into
China will add another market and another language, the unit
says.

The character also has been a big consumer products hit for
Viacom, with merchandise available in 22 territories. Globally,
“SpongeBob” has generated nearly $4 billion in retail sales
since its launch in 2000, according to MTV Networks.

INTERNATIONAL INROADS

Among other successes, the company says “SpongeBob” has
this year dominated the U.K. new home video release rankings
for kids’ TV titles, has been selling about 130,000 monthly
magazines in Germany since fall 2004′s launch and has garnered
nearly 750 million content downloads in a promotion with
Brazilian mobile phone carrier Vivo this year.

China’s top broadcast regulator, the State Administration
of Radio Film and Television, said last year that Chinese TV
operators should develop more children’s programming
domestically. After a leadership change at SARFT at the end of
2004, limitations on foreign involvement in Chinese media have
tightened.

Still, some Western media companies have seen success with
politically neutral youth entertainment programming. For
example, “CatDog” and the Walt Disney Co.’s “Winnie the Pooh”
have garnered respectable ratings on the CCTV kids network as
measured by Nielsen Media Research. (Nielsen is owned by VNU
Inc., parent company of The Hollywood Reporter.)

When “CatDog” launched in syndication on the CCTV
Children’s Channel in May, it earned a Nielsen rating of 10 in
Beijing, according to Li Yifei, Viacom’s chief representative
in China.

One Nielsen ratings point represents 65,470 viewers in
Beijing, which means that “CatDog” at its peak would have been
seen by 654,700 people living in China’s capital, where the
total TV universe, as measured by Nielsen, comprises 6,547,000
potential viewers.

CCTV Children’s Channel reaches 120 million Chinese homes
and features Nickelodeon programming two hours every day, Li
said.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter